Rocking Your World
by Hawki
Summary: Oneshot: Mia Bennet always liked looking at rocks. For starters, they were simply interesting. And as events demonstrated early on, they were far more resilient to bodily harm than humans...


**Rocking Your World**

The sun is shining, the wind is blowing and this is the day her mother's going to die.

It's the year 2035 and Mia Bennet is sitting in the back of the car that her mother is driving. A road trip someone might have called it in the last century, back when there was enough oil for proper road trips to be carried out. Her father isn't with her, but being an astronaut is a well payed job these days and the Bennet family has been able to save enough money for enough fuel to visit Mia's aunt in Louisiana. After two days of being able to forget the troubles of the world as a family, it is only now that they're driving back to Houston, Texas-a state where oil used to be in abundance.

Of course, spending time together as family also counts for safety. The United States and China are always at each other's throats these days after all, squabbling over who gets what and accusing each other of not pulling their weight in the fight against climate change. Camille Bennet has US citizenship, but as conditions decline, it's not uncommon for some people to look for others to take their frustrations out on.

Still, it's a risk that Camille is willing to take-after all, relations _are _improving given the globalization of space colonization among other things. It's Mia that she's worried about. Half-Caucasian courtesy of Peter, but even so, if anything happened to her little girl, she probably wouldn't be able to go on.

Luckily she won't have to. She's going to die first anyway.

Glancing back at the far right seat from the front left, Camille smiles. Most three year old girls would be playing with dolls and/or making a ruckus on a drive such as this. Mia, in her usual interest, is currently 'examining' a group of rocks she collected from her aunt's garden. A quiet girl, but one who's inquisitive nature is matched only by her father. Geologist Peter Bennet who will be waiting for them in Houston after his latest trip to the moon. Project Pit Stop was a huge success, allowing scientists of all fields, including geology, to visit the moon on a regular basis.

Mia is only vaguely aware of this. She knows that her daddy is an "astro-nort," a field which allowed him to give her a moon rock to 'study' a few months ago. It will be a few years before she's old enough to understand that the rock is basaltic (just like everything else on the moon really" and that "astro-nort" is misspelled, but these are trivial matters. She doesn't answer questions from her father's fellow scientists much, but they can all tell that she'll follow in his footsteps. Who knows, maybe she'll even go to Mars.

Unfortunately, her mother won't see it. And it's at this point in time that fate declares it so.

There isn't much traffic on the roads nowadays and of what traffic there is, most of it is reserved to transport for both people and goods-in short, large vehicles. Vehicles such as trucks driven by drivers struggling to make ends meet. Drivers who just can't keep up with the world's demand for goods and services. Drivers that occasionally lose concentration and drift across the road to the other lane slightly.

And as rare as it is, there's sometimes a car heading the opposite way.

The relative dimensions of time and space freeze for Mia as her head slams against the door. Glass rains down on her from above and for some reason, her dark hair is all wet and sticky. However, she's barely aware of this. She's too busy screaming in terror. Screaming at the sound of ripping metal. Screaming as the car rolls over and over before coming to a stop in a field. Screaming as she clenches her rocks, as if they're a lifeline.

It's only when true silence descends that she stops.

Although her head is pounding, Mia knows something is wrong. She's upside down for starters, looking down at shards of glass mixed with grass, dirt and blood. Gingerly, she undoes her seat belt and flops to what used to be the car's roof. Mummy always told her to keep her seatbelt on, that it saved lives, but that seems rather academic right now. Or at least it would if she knew what the word "academic" meant and she knew where her mother was.

"Mummy?" Mia whispers, looking around as fast as her pounding head will let her. "Mummy, where are you?"

She doesn't have to look far.

Mia will later learn that Camille Bennet died almost instantly, as per having her ribs crushed by what was essentially a head-on collision for the left side of the car. But right now, she doesn't know that. All she knows is that mummy is hanging from the ceiling like one of those silly dolls her friends play with and that after unfastening her seatbelt, looks about as broken as some of them. Her chest is mangled with blood, metal and glass, her eyes glazed and like a doll, isn't breathing.

Despite this, Mia doesn't know she's dead. Not yet at least. After all, what kind of child should be forced to learn about death at the age of three?

"Mummy?" Mia whispers, shaking her mother with one hand while clutching her rocks in another. Solid things, they manage to give her comfort that at least _they_'_re _intact, that they won't break easily. "Mummy, wake up..."

It's only now that Mia realizes that, unlike the rocks, people are frail. So frail that not even the love that exists between parent and child can render them immune to fate's wiles. The only similarity is that like rocks, all must come to dust and even then the rocks can provide elements required for life to grow. In the years ahead, geology will be crucial.

In years to come, she'll understand this fully. But not now. Certainly not now.

Right now, all she can do is hug her mother and weep.


End file.
